16 Responses to A growing concern

Hmm, this is interesting. I’ve never seen a mushroom that looked quite like that. I can’t give you the exact name, but I can tell you that when mushrooms grow in a ring like that it’s called a fairy ring.

The borage flowers are very pretty. They make great decorations for cakes. Lightly whip an egg white, paint the borage flowers with it, then sprinkle them with sugar. Let them dry on waxed paper and then use them to decorate cakes or cupcakes.

Those are not Marasmius Oreades, commonly known as Fairy Ring mushrooms. Marasmius have very woody stipes, an irregular edge, are pale cream beneath with gills and very tasty! They are very easy to recognize and distinguish from other mushrooms. Note the non-gill structure beneath the photos above, very different from gills on the familiar common meadow mushrooms sold in stores, agaricus campestrus. I do not recognize your mushrooms Father Z, but they might be edible Boletes.

Hmmm, a large strange, nameless fungus seemingly attacking the roots of the tree, serving no purpose other than to alter the layout of the lawn and spread its, presumptively, noxious presence to a larger and larger area, crowding out the benign mushrooms that seek only to live in peace and harmony with the order of things that had been established and proved to be salubrious for all concerned for many, many years. If a scientific name is not forthcoming, I would suggest that you call it Clitocybe bugniniensa

The mushrooms on your lawn belong to Gyrodon merulioides, in other sources named Boletinellus merulioides (those are synonymous names, as it often happens in mycology). They are known under the common name of “ash bolete” or “ash-tree bolete”. These are edible mushroom, but not very tasty. I tried to eat them more than once, and I was always disappointed. They have somewhat “woody” taste.

Please, please, and please leave the mushrooms alone! Too many “experts” have died of mushroom poisoning. Some of the highly poisonous ones look just like the good ones: the only difference: one of them will kill you.

I’m glad you found out the name of this “mushroom”, but I did want you to know I have the same type growing in my back yard in Virginia, and have had it for several years. It springs up from the roots of my silver maple tree, so there’s no particular pattern. It’s the same color as yours, but I’d be afraid to eat it, although I love mushrooms.

Borage flowers in gin, huh? My husband will be pleased to hear this. At my house, the plant is referred to as “duck crack”, as when we feed the leaves to the ducks, they act like they are on crack (not that I’ve seen a duck on cocaine, but we’re assuming). Suffice it to say, they enjoy it tremendously.

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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z

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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."

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One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.
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Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
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“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

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"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

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“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

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St. Gregory Nazianzus
ep. 131 - AD 382

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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